Titling a book — AAAARGH!

I learned something yesterday: If you want people to read something, you do not title it “Today I want to talk about age as a symbolic construct”. Too scholarly, right? I tend to groove on those types of analyses because I’m an academic, but I suspect you’d have read it more easily if I’d called the essay “Age and Meaning”, although that sounds like a PBS special. Still, it doesn’t sound like a stuffy lecture.

I hate giving a title to a book more than any other aspect to writing. When I wrote my dissertation on husbands and housework (did you think I was an English professor? No!) I had no title on the day my advisor and I sent out copies and paperwork to my dissertation defense panel. Dr. Hafstrom wryly noted, “We need something to put on this blank here.” My response: “How about ‘Fred‘?” Not surprisingly, she didn’t accept that. The final title was: Women’s Work, Men’s Work: Division of Labor and Wife’s Employment. Or something like that. Although the title doesn’t grab the casual reader, the academic reader can find that in an electronic card catalog and say, “I really need to read that for my dissertation!”

I find titles for fiction to be even more difficult. My latest novel (currently abandoned in favor of my fifth edit of my first novel) bore the original title of The Ones Who Toppled The World. Which sounds like the title of a Fifties’ horror movie but would have worked if the protagonists really toppled the world. They did, but in such a subtle way that the world didn’t realize they were being toppled. Think of it as pushing a can of beans on the bottom of a big pyramid-stacked store display. The cans would eventually topple when the right vibration unlodged the keystone can one tiny fraction more. That’s what my protagonists did in effect — in a very strange and subtle way based on quirky innate powers. I ended up naming the book Prodigies, because the innate powers showed up in individuals who also were young prodigies in their respective interests.

I run titles past my husband, who has read enough science fiction that he can spot real clunkers. “I don’t think Future Past will work as a title because it sounds too much like ‘Days of Future Past’ by the Moody Blues.” I respond sweetly with, “Too bad, because I’m naming my next novel that.” See how collaboration works?

The title you want has to give the idea of the book without giving away too much — Everyone Dies in the End, for example, is described as a “light-hearted coming of age story” by Goodreads. The title gives a glance at the murderous plot and the snark of that phrase as used by the average reader to describe a book. Gone With the Wind describes both the romance and the devastation of that book. Bimbos of the Death Sun — don’t laugh; it’s an excellent mystery novel set at a science fiction convention — reflects the joy that is pulp science fiction novels, and is an incredibly evocative title.

I don’t know that my titles are that exciting: Gaia’s Hands; Mythos; Apocalypse; Voyageurs; Reclaiming the Balance; Prodigies. Not yet written — Gods’ Seeds; Future Past; and I don’t have a name for the last one, but the working title is “Dirty Commie Gypsy Elves“, a really poor title. That’s what we get if I’m left to my own devices naming things.

I appear to like short titles, don’t I? That’s probably because I am in love with words with impact. Some of those are names of shadowy groups in the book — Voyageurs; Prodigies; Future Past. I love shadowy groups with cool, cryptic names. (Too many superhero movies, perhaps?) They’re also character oriented, which is near and dear to my heart.

My least favorite title — Reclaiming the Balance. It flatly states what the book is about, which is the travails of a pacifistic collective recovering from a battle to defend themselves, where they turn against members who are half-human despite the collective’s charter to forsake discrimination. I just don’t know if it grabs people.

If anyone has an idea for the above title please let me know!

Age as a symbolic construct: An iconoclast speaks

Today, I’ve chosen to talk about age as a symbolic construct in writing for two reasons:

1) I just watched the 35th anniversary directors’ cut of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan yesterday. One of the running themes of this movie is aging, as experienced by the protagonist, Admiral James Kirk.

2) Today’s my birthday.

Aging symbolizes many themes and issues in writing. I won’t speak of absolutes here, but trends in what aging means in writing — and in society. I will illustrate with movies, because movies are fresh in my mind and they owe much of their genius (or lack thereof) to screenwriters:

— Mortality. In Wrath of Khan, James T. Kirk has been promoted to a desk job as Admiral. He can’t see as well as he used to and needs reading glasses. He collects antiques — in fact, he feels he himself as an antique until he becomes involved in a battle to the death with a brutal, yet also aging, nemesis.

— Agency. Armande Voisin, the curmudgeonly old woman in the movie Chocolat, has diabetes at a time when control of the disease was not as possible as it is now. Her daughter fusses over her, scolding Armande about what she eats. chiding her not to exert herself, and other well-meant but controlling acts. No spoilers here, but Armande finally wrests agency from her daughter in a delightful but shocking way.

— Attractiveness. According to the movies, we consider men more handsome when they’re older — Sean Connery as James Bond comes to mind. This may have something to do with the instrumental expectations of accomplishment expected from men, because older men outside of the spy industry (see Raging Bull) aren’t lauded for their attractiveness.

We consider women less attractive as they’re older — we find women in their thirties and forties who want to express their desirability to be suspect, and we term them “cougars” — the classic example of a cougar is Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate, who is portrayed as predatory and desperate. Women are expected to be sexless after a certain age, which is why Harold and Maude horrified so many people — an 80-year-old woman in a possibly sexual relationship with a much younger man — a boy, even?

I like to play with age in my stories, just as I like to send up other conventions of culture. In one of my stories, a seventy-five-year-old man becomes a shaman as a result of his totem chasing him halfway across the state. It’s never too late to make a change in your life, right? People will receive this as a heartwarming twist.

On the other hand, in my first book (currently under re-re-editing), a fifty-year-old woman falls in love with a 20-year-old man and vice versa. This is not idle wish fulfillment on my part for those of you who notice I fit in the woman’s age demographic; I wrote it because I wanted to play with the concept — what if the woman holds back because she’s afraid of being considered a cougar, and what if the man was the pursuer? In other words, not The Graduate? Even as I write this, I feel like I have to apologize about this, because I’m afraid you’re thinking “I can handle a semi-sentient vine and a woman with a plant superpower, but a twenty-year-old dating a woman three times his age?! That’s not believeable.” Magic is magic, and if it takes magic to elevate the status of older women, I’m willing to do the job — even if that novel never gets published.

So, I’m another year older, and I forgot the one other bit of symbolism that comes with age, and that is wisdom. Think Spock in the progression of Star Trek movies (old universe, not new universe). Spock goes from being a young, peculiarly unemotional crew member to an elder statesman and almost shamanic figure. Even older women possess this quality in literature as is evidenced by a long literary history of wise grandmother figures and fairy grandmothers.

I will leave you to consider what aspects of aging I consider as I celebrate my 54th birthday.

PS: A couple weeks before Leonard Nimoy (who played Spock in the original universe) died, he hopped onto Twitter to adopt nieces and nephews. No kidding — what a way to show agency on one’s deathbed. I was one of the nieces he adopted. I’m honored to be an honorary niece of Leonard Nimoy, who showed me how to age well.

A Really Short Poem

Note to readers: I’d like to call this Elegy, but only if it plants doubt rather than certainty that the subject is dead. Anyone want to weigh in?

At the reservoir,

Fishing pole in hand,

I tell a story to the wind you’ll never hear.

To know is to know is to know –

We could have argued that

All afternoon over coffee and tea,

But the distance between

Is words and stories and seas.

I tell a story to the wind you’ll never hear.

Teaching in Writing Fiction

Writers have to provide a certain amount of solid grounding in their world, whether it be realism in an “ordinary world” or explaining the rules in a world of magic. But they have to do it carefully — not enough grounding and readers shake their heads at fancy words with no meaning; too much explanation and it comes off like sitting in a lecture in a stuffy classroom.

I wrote that “sitting in a lecture in a stuffy classroom” metaphor very deliberately, because grounding a reader in the rules of the world is, in effect, teaching. Doing this grounding not only helps the reader understand the world, but teaches them something new.

I remember a Jayne Ann Krentz book I once read (yes, I have read fantasy, and some of it is quite good) where the lead male owned a winery. At one point, he strides through the winery checking up on things. That’s about the only detail Krentz provided about the winery — he could have been touring an aircraft carrier for all we knew. This really stood out to me because I used to make wine at home and had considered starting a commercial winery at one point. My character would have stopped by the lab to discuss pH levels and brix — sugar levels — of grape must going into the process and the percentage alcohol and residual sugar of a batch waiting to go into oak barrels if it was red wine or bottling if it was white. He would tour the barrel stock and take a sample from a 55-gallon barrel with a wine thief and taste how it began to mellow under the influence of the oak. With these details, the reader understands more about wine — and the male protagonist is portrayed as having a keen eye on details, an understanding that winemaking is as much a craft as a business, and a rapport with his workers. That’s the beauty of teaching — done right, it develops the rest of the story — character, plot, theme, or all three — as well as teaching the reader about something new.

I do a certain amount of teaching in my own writings — I am, after all, a professor. I write what would be called magical realism if I wrote literary fiction instead of genre fiction (e.g. romance, science fiction, fantasy, Westerns, erotica). Sometimes what I write just has to be revealed rather than explained because there is no logical explanation — for example, the mystical aspects of my writing such as seeing visions and hearing the voices of the Gods (sounds epic, but the recipients of these preternatural events are a twenty-year-old college student and a fifty-year-old architect.)

Some extraordinary things need to be explained — such as the rules around time travel:

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“Ahh, the rock principle.” Ian referred to the fact that when Travellers exacted non-significant changes in a time period — not interactions with major players or major objects — an innocuous change would be made in terms of those non-essential players and objects. For example, if a Traveller picked up a rock in 1620 that an ordinary human of the time would trip over, the timeline would substitute another rock to compensate. In my case, I supplanted the red and white airplane. Significant changes would not be allowed according to the rock principle.

And sometimes I teach the most prosaic things:

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Her permaculture guilds for Barn Swallows’ Dance would be bigger, more complex. Daunting, even. Two acres of six-layer guilds centered on apple trees, surrounded with hazelnut and sea holly and various cane berries, where the tree’s dappled shade would benefit them. Perennial herbs and greens such as scorzonera and chicory would be planted toward the tree’s drip line where they would get enough water. Groundcovers like bunchberry and violets, which would block weeds, and edible vines that grew up the trees, would complete the scene.

When I pick up a book, sometimes I want it to broaden my world. Maybe it’s just me, because I teach college for a living. But if the book can explain something in a non-didactic (non-lecture-y) way, I’m all for it. I hope I’m doing a good job of it.

Bonus:

Josh talked to Eric over breakfast at a greasy spoon by the highway — or rather, Josh mostly listened, because Eric’s shock at having a gift had resolved into a need to try to piece the last night’s revelations together.

“Josh, I’ve had this all my life. I called them ‘hunches’ to cover up the fact that I didn’t just suspect, I saw what was going to happen,” Eric muttered.

“Like with Glenn,” Josh noted. “When he tried to kill himself.”

“Like that. And — I never get speeding tickets. Never.”

“How fast do you drive?” Josh exclaimed.

“Let’s say that when I figured out this precognition thing, I did some reckless things knowing I wouldn’t get caught. In other words, I led a normal childhood despite my military dads.” Eric drank his cup of tea and grimaced. “This is not tea. This is brown water with a side of brown.”

“The coffee’s not better. It’s an oil slick.” Josh replied.

Eric took another swallow of his brown water. “When did you know about me?” he rumbled in his rough basso voice.

“About you?”

“About my gift as you call it.” Eric sighed.

“Since about fifth grade, when I couldn’t figure out how someone who was better at me than aikido couldn’t read the opponent. Then I realized that you could, more than most, and the shock at being able to kept you from responding in time. Like a stutter.”

“Good way of putting it.” Eric paused. “What exactly is your gift?”

“I think I see themes. Usually in symbolic form, to cram in all the possible message in the smallest amount of time. But then I get to interpret them. Good thing I’m an English major.” Josh frowned at his coffee, then changed his mind about drinking it.

“What good does that do?” Eric groused.

“I don’t know. I think it points me in a different direction. And maybe I could point others in that direction through my writing.” Josh peered over Eric’s head . “There’s also the other thing.”

“Other thing?”

“I think I can help Jeanne do what she does. Amplify it. I’m not really sure.” Josh thought back to the time in the park when Jeanne made grass grow, and the pulling he had felt in his gut when he did so.

“Huh.” Eric drained his cup of tea and shook his head. “So like if you keep hanging out in the greenhouse, JB94’s going to devour the both of you.”

“I hope not,” Josh snorted. “Though I expect Jeanne would be thrilled.”

A young, gangly waiter arrived with their food — Eric’s Trucker’s Breakfast, and Josh’s flapjacks with strawberries and whipped cream with a side of sausage.

“You eat like a kid, Josh,” Eric snarked.

“And?” Josh grinned.

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“Oh, nothing.”

More on Revising

I’m currently editing my first novel, Gaia’s Hands, for perhaps the fourth time. Most writers would have delegated this to a drawer forever, but I’m going to use it as a learning tool. And, damn it, I’m stubborn.

The biggest thing I have had to do so far is remove two main characters, Annie and Eric. Not completely, mind you — they remain in the story, but not as main characters. I had read somewhere that more than two main characters distracts from the story, because we experience the story through the main characters. So we’re down to the seemingly mismatched couple I’ve mentioned before — Josh Young, the English major exploring his Asian American heritage and Jeanne Beaumont, the much older college professor who lives in the world of science.

Removing the first person POV for two characters resulted in removing two subplots, which I could do. But it also lost maybe 15,000 words, and publishers in SF/Fantasy now expect 75,000-110,000 words in their submissions. (Tea with the Black Dragon, which was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula the year it came out, would not pass in today’s market). Adding 15,000 words to an existing novel without it looking added on? Slapping two chapters in won’t do it. However, I’ve gotten the opportunity to look through the document with wiser — and older — eyes, identifying places where I erred in the following ways:

Loaded Chekhov’s Gun and dropped it (foreshadowing wasted)
Left plot holes (or as my grad advisor said, “I can’t grade you on what’s in your head”
Missed opportunities to develop secondary characters (although they’re not primary characters, they deserve not to be two-dimensional)
Added more menace (poor Jeanne. Death threats, rocks through her window, and a break-in at her greenhouse.)

The writer will never catch all of these in the writing stage, because the writing stage is about unabashed writing without the burden of editing. Of course, the writer can exercise some constraint — such as paring things that are out of character for a character. I’ve told you readers that I love the writing stage because I can restrain the part of me that says “flying robots? Really?” and write the flying robots in. (Ok, no flying robots, but I am inspired by the lack of restraint in shoujo anime.)

Lots of work, and I have temporarily abandoned a work in progress right after a major dramatic point to do so. Wish me luck — I need it!

Short poem

If a writer sits in a forest

And the tree doesn’t fall,

Does anybody hear?

Too late, skip that,

Hey there, nice hat,

How you been, good day,

Hope you feel better soon

If the bird sits in the forest,

Keeps his song to himself –

Does anybody know?

No time, too rushed,

Gotta go catch my bus,

Still don’t know why

I don’t have any time.

If a forest lives

In the heart of a writer

And nobody sees it,

Does anybody care?

Character Sheets and Why You Need Them

One of the best ways to keep your characters from becoming one big blur such that you can’t tell the difference is the character sheet. I have seen character sheets developed in a notebook in colored ink (What’re you up to these days, Ashley?), as templates for Word, or in software programs such as Scrivener.

At the very least, a character sheet for each main character will help you remember their traits and how they affect the story. Otherwise, it’s entirely possible to have one of your characters fall out of — well, character. For example, one of the themes in my writing is how pacifism has always been a minority position in the US. Therefore I have a lot of pacifistic characters living at the ecocollective that houses many of my novels, and other characters who are not pacifists but have agreed to non-violent rules to live in the collective. And then there’s Gideon, who was brought up by a Quaker mother, but couldn’t resist throwing a punch from time to time. I have to remember which ones are which to be consistent; thus, character sheets.

Character sheets also keep authors consistent from book to book. Case in point: One of my favorite books, one that makes me happy-weepy to read, is Tea with the Black Dragon, by R. A. MacAvoy. One of the protagonists is Oo Long, a mysterious Eurasian man who is more than he seems. Without giving away the plot, Oo Long, besides being the name of a tea, translates to “Black Dragon”. One of my least favorite books is Twisting the Rope, the sequel to Tea with the Black Dragon. My reason for disliking the latter book is because the character of Oo Long changes drastically with no explanation. In fact, his skin is described as “black” in the latter book. At the very least, the author needs to explain why a protagonist has changed color.

The first time I saw a character sheet was 30-some years ago, long before I started writing novels. It looked much like this: (Dungeons and Dragons, 2017).

Sorry for the mouse print. Anyone who has played an RPG recognizes this sheet, or something much like it. (My character was a female half-elf wizard with extreme beauty and maxed-out charisma. Hello, wish fulfillment!)

More pertinent to the discussion — this character sheet does a pretty good job for writers despite its obsession on quantifying character skills and its focus on fighting. I could see this working for sword and sorcery or even urban dystopia with fight scenes.

This next one I looked up on the Internet, a veritable treasure trove of character sheets. I love this sheet:

This sheet has so much detail, it would almost work as an intake assessment form in case management — all it’s missing is the mental status exam. I think I could use this form while discussing with my husband the fine points of a character over a three-hour coffee date. On the other hand, I have a novel with 65 characters, for which I have at least partial character sheets. Imagine filling this doc out for 65 characters!

The third character sheet is what I use, because it’s electronic and because it’s bundled with my storywriting/formatting software, Scrivener:

I prefer the simplicity of this document — I can fill this out in 20 minutes or less and get back to writing. My favorite part of this document, however, is that I can drag and drop a picture to remind me of what the character looks like!

If you were to ask me, though, which character sheet/method is the best, I would not answer with Scrivener’s document, although it’s my favorite so far. As with many other things in life, the best character sheet is the one you’ll use.

As always, sources:

Dungeons and Dragons (2017). Character sheets. Available: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets [September 6, 2017].

Lerner, T. and Walker, K. (2017). The epiguide.com guide to character sheets. Available: http://www.epiguide.com/ep101/writing/charchart.html

Scrivener [Computer software]. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php.

Self Images.

I am a whirlwind, awhirlwind, doling out fire and storm.
Wretched, I hold my head as I type this.
I ask you the question, “Tell me your meaning.” I hold you to the answer.
You watch me stride across the classroom, my hands shaping a concept as I speak.
My dimples show when I smile over my glasses at you.
You can’t stop looking at me. You can’t stop wondering. You don’t know why.
In my office, there is a collection of stuffed toy Internet-famous cats.
I clutch the railing, lest my leg gives out.

Tell me your meaning. All of your meanings.
If you can, you can create three-dimensional characters.

Editing is like popping pimples

(Trigger warning: Footnotes below)

The first stages of a novel — the writing — send my heart soaring. Discovering my characters’ quirks, finding their voice, finding MY voice, inserting moments of foreshadowing … it’s like a primitive ritual that spins into communion with Erato*.

Maybe I exaggerate. At any rate, creating a new world with new characters and new surroundings thrills me. I want to talk about writing with my husband, my friends, and anyone who will listen, all of whom react with “that’s nice” while they wonder if I’ve kept up with my lithium**.

Editing, on the other hand, feels like an exorcism. Looking through the draft for demons hiding between the sentences, suffering from boredom because there’s eighty thousand words to look through, and then finding something that doesn’t look like it should be there and wondering if it’s a demon or a cute cuddly spotted owl.

Or another extended metaphor with a side of simile: Editing feels like popping pimples — gross but necessary***. The great thing about this metaphor is that it has a happy ending: there is a certain satisfaction to popping pimples****. I’m not going to extend this metaphor any longer because — gross.

I’ve been editing for several days ***** and I can vouch that the extended metaphors are true to a point: I’ve read pages and pages the past several days with the following simultaneous charges: Make sure you take out that experimental technique the last agent who rejected you told you to take out. Make sure things still make sense from the previous changes. Make sure everyone’s still in character. Make sure the story captures people’s attention — how do I know what catches people’s attention? I’m weird. All of this while maintaining that people should be interested in agricultural back to earthers vs corrupt ag concern only with visions, Gaia-given powers, and a December-May love affair.******

But oh, when I fix something and I feel it’s right — which isn’t often — it’s so satisfying. Like popping — eww, gross!

* The ancient Greek muse of erotic poetry/lyric poetry. Why Erato? Because the ancient Greeks appeared not to write prose. None of the other muses worked — Urania, honestly?

** Lithium is the gold standard for treating bipolar disorder, particularly the manic/hypomanic stages. Currently, my lithium is trying to kill me with side effects mimicking acute toxicity, and I’m trying to get my shrink to see that my lithium is trying to kill me.

*** Dermatologists like Dr. Pimple Popper — not kidding! — would prefer you let them pop your pimples at exorbitant prices.

**** If you don’t believe this, Dr. Pimple Popper’s videos have almost 8 million views on YouTube.

***** when my lithium hasn’t been trying to kill me

******I meant “December-May”. She’s 50; he’s 20. I like making you uncomfortable with things like older women and younger men.